Frank Chu holds Bill Clinton, Grover Cleveland, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan and other former US Presidents responsible for working with the populations of the 12 Galaxies and directing the CIA, FBI, Universal Studios, and other agencies and corporations to embezzle royalties owed to him as the star of a television and movie series called “The Richest Family.” Chu believes he has starred in the series since childhood, which has been a major success in other galaxies. Yet because the syndicated series is shot with top-secret invisible cameras and edited weekly, Chu claims he was unaware of it until he received telepathic messages from supportive former Soviet and UN presidents in the mid-1990s. Chu asserts that many of the US presidents responsible are actually duplicates, therefore his protests have frequently called for the impeachment of Clinton even after Clinton was no longer in office. The 12 Galaxies also regularly commits war crimes and treasons in this and in other galaxies.

Cops are the coal in people’s Christmas stockings. No decent person puts coal in a Christmas stocking. So all of them need to be gone. Cops. All of them. Gone. Now. Let them clean toilets. Leave the people in peace.

The Romanian volubly refused. When Raziel realized that his driver’s mind was not about to be changed, he got out of the taxi and set out on foot for the Old City.

Approaching the end of the Via Dolorosa, almost at the Lions’ Gate, above the shouting he heard a voice he knew. It was the voice of Adam De Kuff speaking from the upper quadrant of his interior universe, strong, unafraid, joyful, thoroughly delusional. Raziel shouldered his way through the ranks until he saw the man himself.

He wore what looked like an army jacket that fitted him so badly its cuffs stopped a little past his elbows. He had hugely baggy army trousers and untied muddy boots whose laces coiled around his ankles and twisted underfoot as he shuffled passionately from one end of the bench to the other like a dancing bear. There was a kippa on his head and a white scarf tied around his forehead like a turban and he crooned at the top of his voice.

Raziel kept trying to force his way closer to the old man. He had the notion of taking him away from there, before the thing failed utterly, before all spells and mercies were suspended, before whatever grace that had touched their pilgrimage was withdrawn and the violence and raw holiness of the place overwhelmed everyone.

De Kuff himself understood only that he was in the place he knew and loved best, the scene of his successes, the ancient Serapion and Pool of Israel. All that day he had been trying to reach the souls within himself as they weaved in and out of his consciousness. He had begun to think that everything he had ever believed about soul and mind was wrong. There was no way to exercise control.

But there at the Fountain, his souls were manifest and his heart was full, and in the completeness of his joy he had no choice but to tell about it. It was necessary to tell everyone, anyone, no matter how distressed or distracted they might be by politics or by the illusion of separateness and exile that burdened everyone. He felt elected and protected by God, ready to support the Ark in the holiest of places. He used the metaphors that were employed in this city, although, in a way, it might have been anywhere.

“Call me as you like,” he explained to the angry crowd. “I am the twelfth imam. I am the Bab al-Ulema. I am Jesus, Yeshi, Issa. I am the Mahdi. I am Moshiach. I have come to restore the world. I am all of you. I am no one.”

There were screams of terrible passion. “Perish he! Death!”

People began to throw stones.

“Death to the blasphemer!”

De Kuff opened his arms to them. For a moment those who were advancing on him stopped. Raziel, shouting, shoving, tried to get through.

“You don’t have to listen,” Raziel said to the crowd. “It’s all over. Rev,” he shouted to De Kuff, “it’s all over! Another time, man. Another soul. Another street.”

The men who were taking hold of De Kuff, pulling him down as he tottered on his bench, also laid hands on Raziel.

“Another day!” Raziel told them. “Another mountain!”

“I tell you, ” De Kuff informed them in his restrained Louisiana drawl. “That all was once One and will be and has always remained so. That God is One. And faith in Him is One. And all belief is One. And all believers in Him, regardless of sect, are One. Only the human heart divides. So it is written.

“See? Do you see?” De Kuff asked the men who were pulling him down. “Everyone’s waiting. And the separateness of things is false.”

He went on declaiming, using the images, the reversals, the metaphors everyone knew, expounding the souls, raising their voices, until the great holiness turned to fire and he lost consciousness.